This chapter argues for the need for everyday aesthetics for filling the lacunae created by prevailing Western aesthetic theories that are primarily concerned with paradigmatic Western art and ...
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This chapter argues for the need for everyday aesthetics for filling the lacunae created by prevailing Western aesthetic theories that are primarily concerned with paradigmatic Western art and memorable aesthetic experiences. Even with an expanded scope of art to include more recent art — such as environmental art and art of the everyday, and non-Western art like the Japanese tea ceremony — everyday objects, environments, and phenomena often do not share art-making characteristics, making them seem either second-rate ‘wannabe’ art or not worthy of investigation. However, confining the aesthetic to art-making features or standout experiences is misleading and deprives us of an opportunity to explore a rich array of aesthetically relevant and significant issues. The twofold mission of everyday aesthetics is to highlight the extraordinary aesthetic potential of the most ordinary everyday experience and, at the same time, to analyze our ordinary aesthetic reaction in its everyday mode.Less

Neglect of Everyday Aesthetics

Yuriko Saito

Published in print: 2007-12-01

This chapter argues for the need for everyday aesthetics for filling the lacunae created by prevailing Western aesthetic theories that are primarily concerned with paradigmatic Western art and memorable aesthetic experiences. Even with an expanded scope of art to include more recent art — such as environmental art and art of the everyday, and non-Western art like the Japanese tea ceremony — everyday objects, environments, and phenomena often do not share art-making characteristics, making them seem either second-rate ‘wannabe’ art or not worthy of investigation. However, confining the aesthetic to art-making features or standout experiences is misleading and deprives us of an opportunity to explore a rich array of aesthetically relevant and significant issues. The twofold mission of everyday aesthetics is to highlight the extraordinary aesthetic potential of the most ordinary everyday experience and, at the same time, to analyze our ordinary aesthetic reaction in its everyday mode.

Several issues emerge from exploring everyday aesthetics. First, its normative mission to illuminate the hidden aesthetic potential of the ordinary may conflict with its descriptive role in analyzing ...
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Several issues emerge from exploring everyday aesthetics. First, its normative mission to illuminate the hidden aesthetic potential of the ordinary may conflict with its descriptive role in analyzing our ordinary aesthetic reaction toward the ordinary. Second, while everyday aesthetics questions our tendency to judge some thing/body by the cover, it cannot dismiss this familiar phenomenon. Third, in fully acknowledging and appreciating the power of the aesthetic for guiding our attitudes and actions, we must be vigilant about utilizing this power toward a certain end, which can range from green aesthetics to the political nationalism promoted in modern Japan. Finally, some contemporary artists' attempt to overcome the gap between art and life by emulating or appropriating the everyday may be fraught with paradoxes created by the inescapable predicament of arthood that stands out from the everyday. These tensions reinforce the point that everyday aesthetics are quite complex, worthy of further exploration.Less

Conclusion

Yuriko Saito

Published in print: 2007-12-01

Several issues emerge from exploring everyday aesthetics. First, its normative mission to illuminate the hidden aesthetic potential of the ordinary may conflict with its descriptive role in analyzing our ordinary aesthetic reaction toward the ordinary. Second, while everyday aesthetics questions our tendency to judge some thing/body by the cover, it cannot dismiss this familiar phenomenon. Third, in fully acknowledging and appreciating the power of the aesthetic for guiding our attitudes and actions, we must be vigilant about utilizing this power toward a certain end, which can range from green aesthetics to the political nationalism promoted in modern Japan. Finally, some contemporary artists' attempt to overcome the gap between art and life by emulating or appropriating the everyday may be fraught with paradoxes created by the inescapable predicament of arthood that stands out from the everyday. These tensions reinforce the point that everyday aesthetics are quite complex, worthy of further exploration.

This chapter discusses the pervasive traits of ordinary experience: the inner connection between truth and goodness, the exemplification of a unified process, regularity, and comprehensiveness. The ...
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This chapter discusses the pervasive traits of ordinary experience: the inner connection between truth and goodness, the exemplification of a unified process, regularity, and comprehensiveness. The chapter aims to approach these traits as they show themselves within ordinary life. The description of the ordinary or common attributes of experience cannot be discussed entirely in the language of everyday life. A successful account of ordinary experience must save the phenomena rather than replace them from the outset with technical artifacts. The second half of the chapter takes up the question of how one ascertains the natures of the beings that one encounters within the continuum of experience. This chapter begins by defending the thesis of the goodness of reason.Less

The Attributes of Ordinary Experience

Stanley Rosen

Published in print: 2002-07-11

This chapter discusses the pervasive traits of ordinary experience: the inner connection between truth and goodness, the exemplification of a unified process, regularity, and comprehensiveness. The chapter aims to approach these traits as they show themselves within ordinary life. The description of the ordinary or common attributes of experience cannot be discussed entirely in the language of everyday life. A successful account of ordinary experience must save the phenomena rather than replace them from the outset with technical artifacts. The second half of the chapter takes up the question of how one ascertains the natures of the beings that one encounters within the continuum of experience. This chapter begins by defending the thesis of the goodness of reason.

This book concludes with a discussion of how philosophy begins as a disruption within ordinary experience, and the ambiguity of the expression “ordinary experience.” The central issue here is that ...
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This book concludes with a discussion of how philosophy begins as a disruption within ordinary experience, and the ambiguity of the expression “ordinary experience.” The central issue here is that the local or special senses of “ordinary” and “extraordinary” are defined with respect to the paradigm of what usually or rarely happens. The reason it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the ordinary and the extraordinary is that, in these cases, one cannot easily determine what usually happens. Nevertheless, in order to use the expression “extraordinary” meaningfully, one must allude to a sense of the ordinary that either does, or ought to, or could hold in the circumstance under dispute.Less

Concluding Remarks

Stanley Rosen

Published in print: 2002-07-11

This book concludes with a discussion of how philosophy begins as a disruption within ordinary experience, and the ambiguity of the expression “ordinary experience.” The central issue here is that the local or special senses of “ordinary” and “extraordinary” are defined with respect to the paradigm of what usually or rarely happens. The reason it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the ordinary and the extraordinary is that, in these cases, one cannot easily determine what usually happens. Nevertheless, in order to use the expression “extraordinary” meaningfully, one must allude to a sense of the ordinary that either does, or ought to, or could hold in the circumstance under dispute.

Unlike theistic celebration and rituals based on relationship to the Divine and taking place in sacred space, this chapter argues for a more mundane sense of celebration and ritual. It argues that ...
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Unlike theistic celebration and rituals based on relationship to the Divine and taking place in sacred space, this chapter argues for a more mundane sense of celebration and ritual. It argues that humanist celebration involves recognition of the depth of life and a desire to connect to the details of our existence. Celebration, in this way, takes place in a variety of spaces—over dinner, during a walk, in one's living room, and so on.Less

Humanistic Celebration as the Ritualizing of Life

Anthony B. Pinn

Published in print: 2012-01-04

Unlike theistic celebration and rituals based on relationship to the Divine and taking place in sacred space, this chapter argues for a more mundane sense of celebration and ritual. It argues that humanist celebration involves recognition of the depth of life and a desire to connect to the details of our existence. Celebration, in this way, takes place in a variety of spaces—over dinner, during a walk, in one's living room, and so on.

The concept of the ordinary, along with such cognates as everyday life, ordinary language, and ordinary experience, has come into special prominence in late modern philosophy. Thinkers have employed ...
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The concept of the ordinary, along with such cognates as everyday life, ordinary language, and ordinary experience, has come into special prominence in late modern philosophy. Thinkers have employed two opposing yet related responses to the notion of the ordinary: scientific and phenomenological approaches on the one hand, and on the other, more informal or even anti-scientific procedures. This book presents a comprehensive study of the main approaches to theoretical mastery of ordinary experience. It evaluates the responses of a wide range of modern and contemporary thinkers, and grapples with the peculiar problem of the ordinary—how to define it in its own terms without transforming it into a technical (and so, extraordinary) artifact. The book's approach is both historical and philosophical. It offers Montesquieu and Husserl as examples of the scientific approach to ordinary experience; contrasts Kant and Heidegger with Aristotle to illustrate the transcendental approach and its main alternatives; discusses attempts by Wittgenstein and Strauss to return to the pre-theoretical domain; and analyzes the differences among such thinkers as Moore, Austin, Grice, and Russell with respect to the analytical response to ordinary language. The book concludes with a theoretical exploration of the central problem of how to capture the elusive ordinary intact.Less

The Elusiveness of the Ordinary : Studies in the Possibility of Philosophy

Stanley Rosen

Published in print: 2002-07-11

The concept of the ordinary, along with such cognates as everyday life, ordinary language, and ordinary experience, has come into special prominence in late modern philosophy. Thinkers have employed two opposing yet related responses to the notion of the ordinary: scientific and phenomenological approaches on the one hand, and on the other, more informal or even anti-scientific procedures. This book presents a comprehensive study of the main approaches to theoretical mastery of ordinary experience. It evaluates the responses of a wide range of modern and contemporary thinkers, and grapples with the peculiar problem of the ordinary—how to define it in its own terms without transforming it into a technical (and so, extraordinary) artifact. The book's approach is both historical and philosophical. It offers Montesquieu and Husserl as examples of the scientific approach to ordinary experience; contrasts Kant and Heidegger with Aristotle to illustrate the transcendental approach and its main alternatives; discusses attempts by Wittgenstein and Strauss to return to the pre-theoretical domain; and analyzes the differences among such thinkers as Moore, Austin, Grice, and Russell with respect to the analytical response to ordinary language. The book concludes with a theoretical exploration of the central problem of how to capture the elusive ordinary intact.

This chapter presents a dispute concerning the philosophical authority of science that marks the decisive character of the pursuit of the ordinary in the twentieth century. There are those who ...
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This chapter presents a dispute concerning the philosophical authority of science that marks the decisive character of the pursuit of the ordinary in the twentieth century. There are those who understand ordinary experience as fundamentally political, in the broad sense of that term; they differ from those who assign no special prominence to politics but arrive at a theoretical abstraction of “the plain man” or the life of “average everydayness,” to mention two prominent examples. In the first case, “ordinary experience” is inseparable from the older view that human beings are by nature the sole political animals. In the second, the role of politics is minimized. One detects instead the influence of the Christian preoccupation with the destiny of the individual person, or alternatively, the increasing anonymity of late-modern life that is dominated by technology, industry, and the other features of mass society.Less

Politics and Nature in Montesquieu

Stanley Rosen

Published in print: 2002-07-11

This chapter presents a dispute concerning the philosophical authority of science that marks the decisive character of the pursuit of the ordinary in the twentieth century. There are those who understand ordinary experience as fundamentally political, in the broad sense of that term; they differ from those who assign no special prominence to politics but arrive at a theoretical abstraction of “the plain man” or the life of “average everydayness,” to mention two prominent examples. In the first case, “ordinary experience” is inseparable from the older view that human beings are by nature the sole political animals. In the second, the role of politics is minimized. One detects instead the influence of the Christian preoccupation with the destiny of the individual person, or alternatively, the increasing anonymity of late-modern life that is dominated by technology, industry, and the other features of mass society.